The present invention relates to a storage system, and more particularly relates to a storage system suitable for file management.
JP-A-2003-208362 discloses a SAN/NAS integrated storage system having a block I/O interface and a file I/O interface. A block I/O interface handles I/O requests on a per-disk-block basis (block access requests). An FC (Fibre Channel), a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), an iSCSI (internet SCSI), an ESCON (Enterprise System Connection: registered trademark) or similar can be included in the block I/O interface. A system where a plurality of host systems and a plurality of storage systems are mutually connected via the block I/O interface such as one using a Fibre Channel is called a SAN (Storage Area Network).
Meanwhile, a file I/O interface handles I/O requests on a per-file basis based on a file transfer protocol (file access requests). An NFS (Network File System), a CIFS (Common Interface File System) and the like are known as file transfer protocols between a file server and a client. A storage system that can be connected to a network such as an IP (Internet Protocol) network via the file I/O interface is called NAS (Network Attached Storage).
A SAN/NAS integrated storage system receives I/O requests from a plurality of host systems via a SAN, an IP network, or similar.
In conventional storage systems, host systems have performed batch processing on a per-file basis such as virus checking or data backup for disk drives within the storage systems.